Moral capital and leadership

2 Moral capital and leadership He was more concerned to be a good man than to be thought one; and so the less he courted fame, the more did it attend his steps unsought. Sallust (on Cato), Conspiracy of Catiline In the following chapters I will be looking at the politics of moral capital largely through the prism of leadership. Leaders generally form a signiW- cant repository of trust for those whose interests they try to advance, or whose causes they actively and symbolically represent, or in whom they have inspired some ideal to be realized. It is in studies of leadership, or in political biographies, that students of politics most commonly address the subject that I here label moral capital, usually under the banner ‘‘moral authority’’ or ‘‘moral character.’’ (During electoral campaigns, it arises as ‘‘the character issue.’’) It is often clear from leadership studies that the perceived character of a person along with assessment of their general leadership competence is a signiWcant factor in the way they are appraised and dealt with, not only by supporters and followers, but even by political opponents. 1 Genuine respect facilitates the achievement of political goals, while its absence or loss may make it impossibly diYcult to gain even trivial ends. My purpose is not, however, that of most leadership studies which try to deWne kinds or qualities of leadership and the conditions under which they are likely to emerge. I am not interested – except incidentally as it may touch on the moral factor in leadership – in whether leadership is best understood as a matter of the possession of certain physical and psychological traits, or as an expression of diVerent behavioral styles, or the result of the contingent situational contexts in which leadership emerges, or as a causative process through which ‘‘charismatic’’ individ- uals inXuence followers and subordinates. 2 I study certain leaders in … See, e.g., Martin Benjamin, Splitting the DiVerence: Compromise and Integrity in Ethics and Politics (Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 1990), chapter 6.   On trait theory, see, e.g., R. Stogdill, Handbook of Leadership (New York, Free Press, 1974); and J. Conger, Learning to Lead (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1992); on behavioral theory, see R. White and R. Lippitt, Autocracy and Democracy: An Experimental Inquiry 27 order to understand the workings of moral capital in politics, not to investigate the nature of leadership as such. Nevertheless, some general points relevant to my enterprise may be derived from the leadership literature. Leadership: the moral dimension The Wrst is the general recognition of the noncoercive, reciprocal nature of the relationship between leaders and followers, or between leaders and (to use a less loaded term) constituents. Leadership may involve the use of power but cannot be reduced to an exercise of power, for it relies crucially on persuasion. Though political leaders may occupy positions of oYcial authority, acts of leadership are not authoritative commands since constituents are not subordinates. Leaders are inevitably symbols, with the top leader of a community or nation symbolizing the group’s collec- tive identity and continuity. Leadership is thus generally distinguished from management, partly on account of this symbolic role and partly on the grounds that the leaders are less tightly linked to an organization than are managers – and indeed some leaders may not be attached to any organization at all. 3 The relative freedom of both political leaders and constituents means that the relationship between them must generally be one of conWdence and trust and not of coercion. I have stated that for moral capital to exist it must have attractive and not compulsive power, that people must be relatively free to judge for themselves and to exhibit uncoerced moral consent. This is congruent with James MacGregor Burns’ deWnition: ‘‘Leadership over human beings is exercised when persons with certain motives and purposes mobilize, in competition or conXict with others, institutional, political, psychological, and other resources so as to arouse, engage, and satisfy the motives of followers.’’ 4 Moral capital may be conveniently thought to be included among the ‘‘other resources’’ noted here. It was in fact Burns among modern leadership theorists who drew speciWc attention to the moral dimensions of leadership. He distinguished two forms of political leadership apt for diVerent conditions, the transac- tional and the transforming. Transactional leaders are eVective horse- (New York, Harper, 1960); and R. Likert, Human Organization (New York, McGraw- Hill, 1967); on contingency theory, see F. Fiedler, A Theory of Leadership EVectiveness (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1967); on charismatic or transformational theory, see B. Bass, Performance Beyond Expectations (New York, Free Press, 1985); and A. Bryman, Charisma and Leadership in Organizations (London, Sage, 1992). À John W. Gardner, On Leadership (New York, The Free Press, 1990), pp. 2–3 and 18. à James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (New York, Harper Colophon, 1978), p. 18. 28 Moral capital traders, brokering deals between various interests represented by groups, factions or parties. Typical of transactional leaders are those who domi- nate the processes of complex legislatures like the American Congress. They are means-dominated, status quo politicians who operate as insiders within a pluralistic political environment, and for their leadership to work they must observe what Burns calls modal values – honesty, responsibility, fairness and the honoring of commitments. Transformational leaders, on the other hand, attempt to alter the status quo and create a new political culture. To do this they must be teachers who can elevate the motives, values and goals of followers, uniting their particular interests in the pursuit of ‘‘higher’’ goals. The values of transformational leaders are end-values, like liberty, justice and equality. 5 Burns’ distinction recalls an earlier one made by Max Weber, who was also concerned with the moral dimensions (and indeed the moral di- lemmas) of political leadership. Weber observed a dichotomy in politics between what he called an ethic of responsibility and an ethic of ultimate ends, the former characterizing what can be broadly termed pragmatic politics and the latter a ‘‘politics of conviction.’’ These were Weberian ‘‘ideal-types’’ of political action, as performed, on the one hand, by the responsible leader who takes a relativistic view of a complex world and prudentially weighs action, goals, means and foreseeable consequences with cautious care; and, on the other, by the leader of conviction who is so blinded by the absolute value of ultimate ends as to be largely indiVerent to the actual present consequences of action. Burns, without noting the parallel of Weber’s dualistic categorization to his own, argues that the danger of the politics of responsibility is that it can lead to values so hopelessly fragmented and relativized as to be able to justify anything, thus cloaking hypocrisy and opportunism in undeserved moral raiment. Conviction politicians, by contrast, are dangerous because of their fanati- cal devotion to a single millenarian end-value that is both indiVerent to and destructive of other values. Burns observes (again without noting the applicability of the argument to his own dichotomization) that this dual- ism is oversimpliWed, and that most leaders and followers in fact shift back and forth from speciWc, self-involved values to broader, public- involved ones. He argues that the ethic of responsibility is really the considered, day-to-day application of the ‘‘ethic of ultimate ends’’ to complex circumstance. 6 This view is in fact identical to that which Weber himself defended. He argued that the ethic of ultimate ends and the ethic of responsibility are not absolute contrasts, but supplements, which only in unison can Õ Burns, Leadership,p.426. Œ Ibid.,p.46. 29Moral capital and leadership constitute a man with a genuine ‘‘calling for politics.’’ 7 The potential barrenness of pragmatic, instrumental politics is redeemed by a passion- ate, vitalizing attachment to valued ends; the irresponsibility of a passion- ate conviction that dispenses with scruples in its drive to power is defeated by a constant concern to appraise and reappraise both means and conse- quences. This diYcult synthesis of realism and idealism is necessary for Weber because of the tragic element he discerns in all politics. Politicians, he argues, operate within a world that is ethically irrational, where the consequences of action even for ‘‘good’’ ends are inherently unpredict- able. Moreover, it is impossible to dodge the fact, he says, that all political action is ultimately sanctioned by the use of force, and consequently that attaining good political ends requires a willingness to pay the price of using morally dubious means. ‘‘From no ethics in the world,’’ he wrote, ‘‘can it be concluded when and to what extent the ethically good purpose ‘justiWes’ the ethically dangerous means and ramiWcations.’’ 8 The respon- sible politician therefore takes on the burden of using sometimes dubious and dangerous means for ends that cannot be wholly guaranteed, striving for political success while trying to keep some proportionality between the means employed and the ends desired, between political action and actual consequences. The instrumentally rational ethic of responsibility thus avoids the sin of ruthless monism while the passionate ethic of conviction gives meaning to the compromises and casualties of pragmatic maneuver. Weber argues that the politician to whom politics is a true vocation must stand for something. ‘‘To take a stand to be passionate – ira et studium – is the politician’s element, and above all the element of the political leader.’’ 9 Weber’s (and Burns’) ideal-types are better interpreted as the extreme ends of a spectrum of possibilities of political practice and political leadership. At the pragmatic extreme, politicians become so absorbed in wheeling-dealing, number-counting and horse-trading – so involved in the political game as given – that they forget (or cease to believe in) any larger goals the game is supposed to serve. In these circumstances power may be cynically used for frankly self-serving and client-serving ends, dispensing even with a shield of hypocrisy to conceal its moral nakedness. At the other extreme, power is placed at the service of an absolute value which con- sumes all other values and interests and may annihilate all human interests whatsoever. Particular political practices and particular leaders will oc- cupy positions somewhere along this spectrum, leaning either more to- ward the pragmatic, or more toward the politics of conviction. œ Max Weber, ‘‘Politics as a Vocation,’’ in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.), From Max Weber (London, Routledge, 1970), p. 127. – Ibid.,p.121. — Ibid.,p.95. 30 Moral capital Weber was engaged in a normative exercise for the serious political leader who, he believed, should occupy the diYcult middle ground between the extremes. (Gandhi, who called himself a ‘‘practical-idealist,’’ also preached and tried in his own way to occupy this middle ground, though unlike Weber he believed that ethically ‘‘pure’’ practical decisions were both possible and necessary.) 10 A study of moral capital, however, is more concerned with the relational aspects of leadership than with leader- ship per se and must therefore consider the above-mentioned spectrum from its own perspective. One may conclude that moral capital is unlikely to be an important factor at either extreme. Cynically pragmatic politics do not tend to inspire favorable moral judgments while the totalitarian propensities of fanatical monomaniacs are, in the end, likely to prove destructive of the capacity even for making such judgments. Short of these extremes, the nature and force of political leadership, and of the moral capital it inspires, must vary according to circumstances. In a stable political environment with accepted institutions that are presumed to be legitimate and to serve legitimate interests, the leaders that Burns calls ‘‘transactional’’ will gain moral capital by their eVectiveness and trust- worthiness in brokering deals among plural interests. But challenges, whole or partial, to the legitimacy of the status quo cannot be eVectively carried or repulsed by such transactional leadership. These require an emphasis on end-values typical of conviction politics or of transform- ational leadership, and moral capital will accrue to leaders who eVectively articulate, defend and symbolize these values. In circumstances where bitter contestation and conXict occur over questions of legitimacy and justice, moral capital will play a particularly conspicuous role. (It is for this reason that I have chosen such circumstances for investigation in the studies that follow.) Weber did in fact deal with the relational aspects of leadership in a discussion of the diVerent forms of authority and the diVerent styles of leadership associated with them. He famously discerned three ideal-types of these: the charismatic, the rational-legal, and the traditional or custom- ary. I mention this Weberian ideal-typology because I mean to be clear that when I speak of the moral capital of leaders I am not implicitly talking about charismatic leadership. It is true that several of the leaders treated in this book – Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Kennedy – have often been described as charismatic in the popular sense equally applicable to Wlm stars, but none were charismatic leaders in Weberian terms. The criteria he enumerated for charismatic leadership were: the demand that fol- lowers put absolute trust in the leader personally as an ultimate authority …» Still the best book on Gandhi’s thought is R. N. Iyer, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi (New York, Oxford University Press, 1973). 31Moral capital and leadership and obey his or her will without question; the corresponding dissolution of the authority of all ordinary rational-legal rules and norms; the forma- tion of a Xuid, nonhierarchical community of followers bound together by common devotion and submission to the leader; and proof in action of the leader’s special, magical powers. 11 Charles de Gaulle comes closest to fulWlling these criteria, and it is true that his career also lends itself peculiarly well to analysis in terms of moral capital (a concept, indeed, he applied to himself). It is also true that I will often be dealing with critical political situations of the kind in which charismatic leaders have been observed typically to emerge. Yet crises and large-scale conXicts over legitimacy do not necessarily produce Weberian charismatic leadership. They do tend to produce leaders in the heroic mold, but such leaders do not necessarily, or even usually, have the messianically personal character attributed to charismatic leaders. Some crisis-emergent leaders are in fact of distinctly unheroic mien, charismatic in neither popular nor Weberian senses (think, for example, of Cory Aquino of the Philippines). Their cases show clearly how the possession of moral capital may elevate even quite ordinary persons into positions of leadership. The dissident leaders, indeed, cannot be properly or wholly understood in terms of any of Weber’s categories, which suggests the incompleteness of the latter. My claim is that the concept of moral capital reveals another dimension of authority that is important in the under- standing of politics generally and of leadership in particular. If I tend to dwell on crises and conXicts of legitimacy it is, to repeat, because the political generation and operation of moral capital, and the dependency of politicians on this as a resource, is most clearly and dramatically revealed under such conditions. They are conditions which demand, and therefore tend to produce, ‘‘transformational’’ leadership even among leaders (like the American presidents I examine) whose authority derives mainly from the rational-legal structure of political institutions in which they hold oYce. The ‘‘teaching’’ function of such leaders lies in their eVective deployment of rhetoric and symbolism to maintain the morale of constituents, to inspire devotion and instil a sense of the rightness and nobility of a cause, and to mobilize support for speciWc policy directions. Moral capital and constituencies The fact that leaders cannot exist without someone to lead raises a general question about the relationship of moral capital to constituencies. Moral capital subsists in the general judgment of people, but people’s judgments …… Max Weber, Economy and Society (New York, Bedminster Press, 1968, originally pub- lished 1922), pp. 242–245. 32 Moral capital diVer, as we have seen, very dramatically. But if moral capital lies, so to speak, in the eye of the beholder, then it would seem to follow that it must be bound to speciWc constituencies that make up particular sets of be- holders deWned by things like class, culture, interest, nationality and so on. Moral capital, in other words, would appear to be bound to particular constituencies, deWned by particular end-values and goals, within which it is formed and maintained. Thus the Irish Republican Army appears morally heroic to Republican sympathizers but hardly to Ulster loyalists; a Ben-Gurion is honored by Israelis but despised by Palestinians. But this obvious point has to be qualiWed in several ways that make the tie between moral capital and constituency less tight than it might initially seem. First, maverick loners do, by virtue of moral capital, occasionally attain to positions of power in exceptional and critical circumstances. One might point to the sudden ascent of Winston Churchill in the wartime crisis of 1940 despite a patchy and controversial political career up to that point and despite his lack of either a signiWcant electoral constituency or of a power base among fellow parliamentarians. Churchill was appointed because he had stood in long, vocal and rather lonely opposition to the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, and had called repeatedly for Britain to arm against the threat of it. This singular stance, dismissed as an irritant in a Britain desperate to avoid another debilitating conXict, turned sud- denly into a substantial fund of moral capital once Hitler had propelled Europe into war. It lent huge authority to Churchill’s remarkable oratori- cal eVorts to rouse a dispirited nation to action and defense, creating a single united constituency out of the whole nation at a critical time. By contrast, Churchill’s favorite beˆte noire and fellow maverick, Charles de Gaulle, tried to stand for all of France all the time, basing his career, as we shall see in Chapter 4, on a general appeal across particular constituencies and classes to an ideal that transcended them all. Secondly, though politicians and parties may have their prime constitu- encies, they must often appeal beyond these to wider national or interna- tional audiences if they are to hope to achieve their political aims. This may create dissonance and tension if the values and expectations of the wider constituency diVer signiWcantly from those of the narrower. Wit- ness, for example, the diYcult and dangerous balancing act of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams as he tried to maintain the necessary trust and acquiescence of the ‘‘hard men’’ of the Provisional IRA while presenting himself internationally as a man of peace and reason in order to negotiate a settlement in Northern Ireland. On the other hand, if values are con- gruent, wider moral entreaties can have the eVect of strengthening a political position without threatening rebellion in one’s own back yard; the international moral appeal of Aung San Suu Kyi, for example, 33Moral capital and leadership allowed external political pressure to be brought to bear on her political oppressors without great risk of conXict within her own Burmese consti- tuency. The need to appeal across constituencies is a particularly pressing challenge for political leaders in democratic regimes. Being tied to a constituency, though usually essential to the achievement of power, can also be a decided obstacle to the acquisition and maintenance of necess- ary moral capital. It is one of the perennial conundrums of electoral politics that victory often requires winning votes from a number of distinct constituencies with varying, often contradictory views and values. The need to capture votes militates against taking the sort of strong stands on positions that generate moral credibility. Political candidates need to oVer strong leadership and Wrm policy yet campaigns are often dominated by the need not to oVend anyone either of their own party or among the Xoating voters between or across parties. Instead of exuding moral authority, the candidates often begin to appear morally vacuous or slip- pery. Constituency concerns, in other words, often pose an impediment to the formation of moral capital in electoral circumstances that would-be leaders must strive to overcome. A third point to note with regard to the tie between moral capital and constituencies is that, in a political system widely regarded as legitimate, anyone who attains oYce generally receives a large, gratuitous dollop of moral capital which has eVect across all constituencies. Further, parties and persons that win democratic oYce, whatever their particular consti- tuencies, are supposed to govern for the good of the whole population (at least they must appear to), and their job will be easier if they win respect across party and sectional lines. In fact this expectation generates another familiar problem for moral capital in democratic government, namely whether the governor should give eVect to the contingent will of the people (expressed in their ‘‘mandate’’) or alternatively to his or her own responsible estimation of their general interest. Either or both of these may be deemed morally imperative, leading to a recurring dilemma. To attend too closely to an electorate’s desires courts accusations of pander- ing and populism and gives rise to the suspicion of unscrupulous ambi- tion or lack of personal moral Wber; to take the line enunciated by Edmund Burke, on the other hand, and heed only one’s own responsibly considered judgments, is to court condemnation for high-handedly ig- noring the people’s expressed will, the presumed source of democratic legitimacy. Negotiating this dilemma while trying to maintain moral capital among particular constituencies and across the whole electorate is a perpetual problem for democratic governors, and one that plays an important part of the story of Lincoln in the next chapter. 34 Moral capital Finally, we must note that politics can sometimes produce strange bedfellows, and political necessities can drive leaders and parties to make common cause with supposedly mortal enemies. Respect for an opponent makes for greater ease of negotiation than does mutual contempt and may even create political opportunities that would not otherwise exist. It is not particularly unusual for leaders to have more respect for able and dedi- cated opponents than for some of their own colleagues and rivals. Despite the general salience of constituencies, therefore, the concept of moral capital should not be thought to be logically or inherently tied to them. Moral capital may accrue in many ways and be eVective across constituency lines in unexpected ways. Personal and institutional moral capital Leaders as individuals strive to acquire personal moral capital on the strength and quality of their commitment and service to end-values, goals and justiWed interests shared by large numbers of people. But the essential connection between leaders and end-values is usually (even if not invari- ably) mediated by organizations or institutions themselves dedicated to these values. Indeed for most individuals, whether leaders or not, such moral capital as they enjoy in political life is largely a function of their membership of larger collective entities – parties, movements, govern- ments, even nations. These entities are themselves the bearers of moral capital insofar as they are perceived to embody principles, purposes and interests believed noble, just, legitimate or morally necessary. The relationship between personal moral capital and what I shall call, for the sake of convenience, institutional moral capital is generally dialectical. Where, for example, stable institutions exist within a stable regime, and where stability is in part a function of wide acceptance of the regime’s legitimacy, political oYces will form signiWcant repositories of the re- gime’s moral capital and be available to incumbents more or less indepen- dently of their character or ability. It is also true, nevertheless, that incumbents’ actions are liable either to degrade or conWrm the reputation of the institution. Revelations of behavior inconsistent with institutional aims and values will tarnish the whole, while honorable service will serve to conWrm and enhance the reputation of both individual and institution. The actions, statements and conduct of leaders, because of their repre- sentative role, naturally carry especial signiWcance. Evidence of irregular- ity at the top may cause a loss of moral capital that constitutes a veritable body blow to an institution, severely impairing its eVectiveness and even calling into question its legitimacy. Such crises of legitimacy can be more or less severe. For example, the 35Moral capital and leadership existing political structure may retain its legitimacy while current power holders lose credibility by virtue of, say, misgovernment or corruption. This describes what David Easton called the loss of ‘‘speciWc support’’ for incumbents and their policies. 12 Such situations are potentially remedi- able by actions to oust the scoundrels or incompetents and replace them with a better lot, whether by democratic or other means (say a ‘‘palace revolution’’ in which the personnel change while the structures of govern- ment remain essentially the same). Secondly, and more seriously, there is what Easton termed a failure of ‘‘diVuse support,’’ where there is an erosion of belief in the legitimacy of the legal-political structure itself. In such cases, challengers will typically argue either for the reform of present arrangements or their replacement by a more legitimate set – for example, the need to replace a despotic government with a democratic one, or a corrupt and ineYcient democracy with an honest and eYcient military dictatorship, or a bourgeois regime with a socialist/communist govern- ment. The causes of such general loss of legitimacy are always historically complex and involve far more than problems in the leadership. Neverthe- less, the quality of the leadership will generally be an important factor in whether the erosion is accelerated or halted. Though incumbents in such circumstances must struggle without the beneWt of the institutional moral capital normally attaching to legitimate oYce, an exceptionally able leader may build personal capital that can, in a contra-movement, be transferred to the oYce or institution thus refounding its legitimacy. As well as the possibility of mutual reinforcement or mutual attrition of personal and institutional moral capital, there exists the possibility of a partial separation of the two. Sometimes outstanding leadership service in a securely legitimized oYce is rewarded with such a mass of personal moral capital that it becomes virtually an independent political force that may produce tensions within the institutional context. The extent of such tensions will depend partly on the nature of the organization itself, in particular on the values emphasized and the role accorded to leadership within it. Where the institutional moral capital of an organization is largely a function of the personal moral capital of the leader – for example in cases of charismatic leadership – tensions are unlikely to be severe. In an anarchist organization, on the other hand, the moral elevation of a particular individual is likely to create powerful institutional stress. In organizations that lie between these extremes, where both leadership and subordination to institutional values are expected, the dialectical relation- ship between personal and institutional moral capital is likely to be highly dynamic and unpredictable. As noted above, leadership must imply some …  David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York, Wiley, 1965). 36 Moral capital [...]... perceived character that are most vital for the acquisition of moral capital Moral capital and leadership 41 These are the qualities of Wdelity, commitment and able action in the service of publicly valued goals Moral capital is always vulnerable to perceptions of serious betrayal of, or incapacity to pursue, valued goals and principles, but character and integrity alone, absent some publicly tested commitment,... inaccurate The personal moral capital of leaders may thus be only very imperfectly related to their actual contributions and characters Studying moral capital All these questions (concerning leaders in relation to ends-values, leaders in relation to constituencies, and leaders in relation to organizations and institutions) can be usefully illuminated, I argue, using the concept of moral capital I will try... leader to build moral capital, to maintain it, and to mobilize it politically These, extracted from the arguments above, I summarize brieXy as cause, action, example, and rhetoric/symbolism Cause I use ‘‘cause’’ to denote the end-values and goals that leaders claim to serve and by virtue of which they expect to maintain and expand their constituencies It establishes their ground of right and is typically... institutional moral capital can work the other way There are occasions (as we shall see in our study of Lincoln) where leaders serve a great cause conscientiously and eVectively – even subsuming their whole being to it – without that service being unproblematically rewarded with personal moral capital This is to be reminded that moral capital depends on people’s judgments and perceptions and that these... illustrate these themes and to show something of the nature of moral capital as a speciWcally political resource I have chosen leaders in circumstances of dramatic contest over legitimacy where the force and consequence of moral capital can be most clearly seen I have also chosen in order to allow signiWcant comparisons and contrasts, so that not only the general importance of moral capital in politics... North’s moral capital was crucial, but his achievement was not directly or immediately recognized in his personal capital He was able to govern in diYcult circumstances and to survive to win a second term because he legitimately occupied (at least in Northern eyes) the oYce of the presidency with all the institutional moral and political capital that implied, and also because he had the ability and determination... was therefore based on the self-conscious accumulation of a personal moral capital that allowed him to gain the leadership of France not 42 Moral capital once, but twice in his lifetime, and eventually to secure institutional arrangements more congenial to his own style of leadership De Gaulle shows what a remarkable force moral capital can be in critical political circumstances, but also how vulnerable... moral capital became seriously divorced from the institutional moral capital of the organization to which he was allegedly subservient even while it advanced the latter, and though it gave him the opportunity of leadership it also made him an object of suspicion and resentment Suu Kyi’s party, on the other hand, was created precisely as a vehicle for the political mobilization of her own personal moral. .. illuminate them in Parts II and III of this book by focusing on the careers of four individual leaders from diVerent periods and diVerent countries In Part IV my focus will be less on individuals than on a particular political oYce, the American presidency, and the loss of institutional moral capital that that oYce suVered in recent historical times 38 Moral capital The leadership studies will be organized.. .Moral capital and leadership 37 measure of discretionary freedom or it can hardly be said to exist This relative freedom even of highly constitutionally constrained leaders produces the permanent potential for moral capital to become somewhat detached from institutions and more Wrmly aYxed to leaders themselves This phenomenon is particularly marked in contexts where political values and purposes . R. N. Iyer, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi (New York, Oxford University Press, 1973). 3 1Moral capital and leadership and obey his or. the loss of institutional moral capital that that oYce suVered in recent historical times. 3 7Moral capital and leadership The leadership studies will be